


where the stars do not take sides

by salvage



Category: Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Cunnilingus, M/M, Penis In Vagina Sex, SPOILERS for TROS, Smoking, Trans Armitage Hux, Trans Poe Dameron, t4t, why is this so soft, wound care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:47:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22198816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvage/pseuds/salvage
Summary: “You gotta come with us,” Poe Dameron said, appearing before Hux, and then he bent at the waist just enough to tuck his shoulder against the concave curve of Hux’s stomach, wrapping his arm around his waist and hoisting him over his shoulder.Hux was too surprised to even speak, or perhaps pained, the burned meat of his thigh pressing against the hard slope of Dameron’s chest. Struggling on instinct, he inhaled the sharp scent of sweat and dust and blaster fire, the animal scent of the Wookiee, the burnt metal and gasoline that seemed to permanently wreathe all pilots.“What the fuck are you doing,” Hux managed to wheeze against Dameron’s back.“Rescuing you.”What if That Scene in TROS went a little differently?
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux
Comments: 22
Kudos: 186





	where the stars do not take sides

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to saezutte and Suzelle. Title from _100 Years_ by Florence + the Machine.
> 
> Please feel free to contact me on twitter @straycryptids if you would like to know any more information about the sex scene in this story before reading!

1

When he was six years old, Armitage Hux fell while climbing an apple tree that grew in the small courtyard of the apartment complex where he lived. His hand slipped off a branch he had grabbed a hundred times before, his chubby fingers curling around nothing at all as gravity exerted its inexorable pull on his body. It seemed to take a long time for the ground to rise up to strike him; he had time enough to extend an arm in an attempt to break his fall, to protect his face and the clean whiteness of the new dress shirt his mother had bought for him just that day and which he was not supposed to be climbing the tree while wearing. His wrist hit the tightly packed dirt first, the impact jarring his arm, then his shoulder in its socket, his collarbones and sternum and scapulae and spine. There was a sickening crunch and something twisted hideously in his arm. The wrongness came first: the snap of what he would later learn was his ulna, the awful throb of muscles and tendons and bone displaced, crushed and twisted in ways they were never meant to be. The pain came after, not even confined to his injured arm but seeming to sweep through his whole body, a forest fire, an uncontrolled blaze that burned broken and whole parts alike until his whole being was alight with it. 

Being shot in the leg was not unlike that. The pain rocketed through him, thigh and knee and hip and shin and stomach, and he fell forward, catching himself with both hands toward the floor, thinking of the snap of his ulna as his palms slammed against steel. He let the screaming pain run its first course, incinerating his whole leg, his hip and groin, his stomach and chest and the span of his shoulders, meeting the surprised shock of his hands against the floor and the memory of bone breaking. One breath in, then out. Then he viciously tamped it down, the pain and the echoes of the pain, the awful screaming of his burned skin and muscle, the new-wound tenderness of his whole body. 

Fuck. He tried to stagger upright, bracing his shoulder against the wall, shoving to his feet—well, foot—despite the near-blinding pain that enveloped his left leg. He had counted on the former trooper, FN whatever-it-was, to shoot him in the arm so he at least retained mobility, but nothing in his life seemed to be going according to plan lately. There was some noise from the hangar bay, blaster fire, armor clattering heavily against metal, and then the rhythmic thud of someone running closer, frantic steps getting louder and louder despite the scattered blaster fire that still sounded from the room. 

“You gotta come with us,” Poe Dameron said, appearing before Hux, and then he bent at the waist just enough to tuck his shoulder against the concave curve of Hux’s stomach, wrapping his arm around his waist and hoisting him over his shoulder. 

Hux was too surprised to even speak, or perhaps pained, the burned meat of his thigh pressing against the hard slope of Dameron’s chest. Struggling on instinct, he inhaled the sharp scent of sweat and dust and blaster fire, the animal scent of the Wookiee, the burnt metal and gasoline that seemed to permanently wreathe all pilots. 

“What the fuck are you doing,” Hux managed to wheeze against Dameron’s back. 

“Rescuing you.” Dameron ducked them through the doorway to the hangar and began to jog toward the Falcon. 

Between the wound and his inverted position, Hux was weak and disoriented, struggling to determine where in the bay he actually was, where the ingress points were, where the Troopers would enter, but each step Dameron took jarred Hux’s wounded leg something awful and it was nearly impossible to concentrate. He curled his hands into loose fists against the warm curve of Dameron’s waist, striving to rise above the pain and regain some functionality in his currently useless body. 

“I don’t need rescuing,” Hux began, “I need—” but Dameron swung around to fire some blaster shots at a new wave of Stormtroopers flooding toward the ship and Hux’s head narrowly missed hitting the pinions attached to the Falcon’s ramp. “Watch it!” Hux snapped. 

“Sorry, _General_ , I’m a little busy saving your ass.” Dameron hauled him up the ramp into the close interior of the Falcon and unceremoniously dumped him just inside the ship, hitting with an open palm the mechanism to retract the ramp. 

The ship rumbled and shuddered, lurching from the hangar with the worrisome groan of what sounded like a pre-Imperial hyperdrive motivator. The shift in gravity gave Hux the leverage he needed to stand, bracing himself against the curved wall of the ship, and stagger in the direction that Dameron went. Dameron and the FN trooper were shouting to each other, the Wookiee was yowling, and the ship lurched again, sending Hux against the opposite wall. He cursed under his breath and slowly, leaning against the wall, dragging his useless leg as quickly as he could, he made his way through the ship. 

Hux reached the cockpit just as Dameron swung the ship around in a maneuver so smooth Hux hardly believed the rickety old junk heap was capable of it. 

“What the hell are you doing,” Hux gasped, throwing himself into the copilot seat. 

“Picking up a friend,” Dameron said casually. Hux watched in shock as he brought the Falcon close enough to the hangar bay that the girl, the scavenger, was able to leap onto the ramp of the ship. 

Kylo Ren, standing alone amid a backdrop of fallen Troopers and brightly polished metal, looked extremely put out by the whole affair, which was a moderate source of comfort to Hux. 

“If you’re quite finished,” Hux said snippily, leaning over to manually prime the hyperdrive like you had to do with old ships. 

“I could have left you there,” Dameron countered, inputting some coordinates and barely waiting for the ship to calibrate their course before rocketing them into hyperspace. 

The stars blurred and Hux’s stomach swooped in the familiar way the body reacted to the leap to hyperspace. He was well and truly tired of experiencing bodily sensations. He turned stiffly in the seat and crossed his arms over his chest in order to level what he hoped was a scathing glare at the pilot. “I’m not sure why you didn’t.” 

“Come on, Hugs, you know they would have killed you.” Dameron sprawled across the pilot’s seat, one arm propped against the control panel, legs splayed in a manner that was either insouciant or seductive. 

“It’s likely.” 

Dameron frowned at him, brows furrowing together above his dark eyes as though Hux had said something absolutely baffling, but before he could speak the FN trooper and the scavenger girl were crowding in the doorway, both speaking over one another. 

“That was such good flying, I—” 

“I can’t believe you—”

They both stopped short upon registering Hux’s presence in the cockpit; the girl’s eyes and mouth went wide. 

“You took him _with us_?” The trooper exclaimed, turning toward Dameron. 

“They would have killed him,” Dameron repeated levelly. 

“What is _the Starkiller_ doing on our ship?” The scavenger said at a very high volume. The trooper, beside her, winced, but he looked at Dameron with pointedly raised eyebrows. 

“He’s the spy!” Dameron told the girl. 

There was a moment of stunned silence in the cockpit.

“They call me the Starkiller?” Hux asked.

“Yes,” the girl said, her lovely face clouding with some dark emotion, “you killed—” she began, before cutting herself off abruptly. “You killed,” she repeated, as though to herself, before storming off down the corridor. The trooper shared an expressive look with Dameron (wide eyes, tipped head, one-shouldered shrug) before following her. 

Dameron turned back to Hux. “That went pretty well!” 

“All… do they really call me the Starkiller?” 

Dameron pointed at Hux. “Don’t make me regret this.” 

The Wookiee came into the cockpit next, looking very large and intimidating and smelling rather of wet dog, and he had a short conversation with Dameron that went something like this: 

Growl, soft rumble. “Yeah, I know.” Another rumble, slightly louder. “Well, we have to be better than they are.” A kind of two-part growl, a deliberately quiet roar, trailing into a soft grumble that almost sounded like a cat purring. The Wookiee’s fur rippled as he gestured toward Hux, and Dameron’s gaze fell to where he pointed: the conspicuous wound on Hux’s upper left thigh. “Oh, shit, Finn really did a number on you, huh.” 

And then Dameron was reaching toward Hux and Hux instinctively cringed back, unthinkingly bracing his left foot against the floor and wincing when pain lanced through his leg. Dameron mumbled something under his breath that Hux couldn’t hear over the roar of blood in his ears. 

“Okay,” Dameron said, louder, clearly trying to get Hux’s attention, and when Hux opened his eyes (when had he closed them?) Dameron was standing too close to him, in his personal space but without touching. “Okay, you’re getting some bacta on that, come on.” 

Hux didn’t have much choice but to accept the warm, insistent pressure of Dameron’s right arm around his back, hauling him up from the copilot seat and into a disconcertingly tight embrace, the scent of sweat and gasoline, the solid compact mass of Dameron’s body against Hux’s own. It had been an unthinkably long time since Hux had been this close to another humanoid’s body, longer still since he hadn’t paid for the experience, and between the insistent pain and post-adrenaline exhaustion some traitorous part of mind wanted to simply relax into the warmth and stability of Dameron’s body, the comfortably tight embrace of Dameron’s arms. 

“I can walk, thank you,” Hux protested, but Dameron did not relent, so Hux reluctantly twined his arm around Dameron’s shoulder, allowing Dameron to support some of the weight of his body. He was surprised to find that Dameron was several inches shorter than Hux was: something about Dameron’s presence made him seem huge, inexorable, immediately drawing the attention of everyone around him with his warm eyes and teasing smile, his carefully disheveled hair and stubbled jaw. 

They made their way through the narrow corridors of the Falcon, a straight passage and then a conspicuously curved one, reaching a dilapidated-looking lounge area that was curiously empty despite Hux’s knowledge that two other humans, at least two droids, and a Wookiee all currently inhabited the very small ship. Dameron carefully deposited Hux in a small bunk beside a dejarik table and what looked like a mostly empty wet bar. Hux edged carefully into the bunk as Dameron produced a huge medkit and shuffled through it, extracting several bacta patches and a roll of gauze, passing them to his left hand but wincing as he tried to lift that arm. 

Hux almost laughed. “You talk a big game for someone who also appears to have a blaster wound.” 

“It’s nothing,” Dameron countered, but looking more closely at his face Hux could see the tightness of pain around his eyes and the unhappy slant of his mouth. 

“You can’t even bandage that yourself,” Hux said disdainfully, sliding over as much as he could in the bunk. “And you’re _not_ removing my trousers. Come here.” 

Dameron grumbled but he climbed into the bunk, tucking a foot beneath the opposite thigh so that he could half-turn toward Hux. His bent knee rested upon Hux’s thigh and though Dameron seemed utterly unaware, that small point of contact overwhelmed Hux’s entire consciousness. To distract himself, Hux set to work: he plucked at the knot that secured the makeshift bandage around Dameron’s arm, unwinding it until it fell away to reveal Dameron’s tanned skin and the ugly red burn mark, surrounded by a halo of angrily scorched flesh. He tore open a bacta patch with businesslike efficiency, holding the discarded packaging with two fingers as he carefully laid the patch over the mark on Dameron’s arm. Goosebumps rose on Dameron’s skin where Hux’s fingertips brushed it, smoothing down the edges of the patch to secure it in place. The gauze came next, unrolled to carefully wrap the wound, around and around Dameron’s thick upper arm. 

“I thought I was supposed to be the one treating your injury,” Dameron said softly. The space between them in the narrow bunk seemed very small. 

“I may have betrayed the organization to which I devoted my entire life, orchestrated the jailbreak of a group of traitors all of whom I had at one point sworn to kill, and been forcibly rescued by said traitors like some errant stray, but I still have my… pride.” Hux finished the thought with somewhat less momentum than he had began with. 

“You okay?” Dameron asked, glancing sidelong at Hux. His eyes looked wide and dark and his eyelashes fluttered as his gaze swept over Hux’s face. A lock of hair fell across his forehead in a manner that Hux could hardly believe was unintentional. 

“No,” Hux answered curtly. “Now get out of here so I can tend to the blaster wound your friend so thoughtfully gave me.” 

Dameron rolled his eyes but he slid out of the bunk and went into the curved corridor, presumably back to the cockpit. Once he had gone Hux unbuckled his wide uniform belt, then unfastened the clasps of the uniform jacket he was still wearing, from the stiff collar around his throat to the slope of his chest and his stomach, finally shedding the thick, wide-shouldered mass of it. 

Hux’s thermoregulatory undershirt had been soaked through with sweat and clung uncomfortably to his skin but he dared not remove it, not when anyone could come into the open lounge at any moment. He plucked the fabric away from his chest, feeling it separate from his sweat-wet skin before settling, chilly and damp, back again, tracing the lines of his pecs, the slope of his ribcage, the dip of his waist and soft curve of his stomach. The right boot was easier to remove than the left; he could have asked Dameron to assist him with the boots but it was too late now. Hitching his left leg high enough to release the hidden zipper on his boot caused the wound on his thigh to shift excruciatingly, and for a moment he thought he might pass out, half-undressed, in this garbage ship’s decrepit lounge. But he pushed the bodily sensations away and slid the boot off, then the trousers, though the material stuck so horribly to the burnt flesh and dried blood of the blaster wound that peeling it off felt like peeling off his own skin, and perhaps he did, a little, because the burn was bleeding sluggishly once the trousers crumpled to the floor. 

With an antiseptic pad Hux cleaned the wound, gritting his teeth against the pain but hearing a high-pitched whine escape his throat anyway, an animal sound of suffering associated not with his clinical mind but with his hurting, miserable body. A mesh of melted threads darkened the burned-raw skin. The antiseptic did nothing against it; likely a medical droid could have extracted the material from the wound but there was only so much Hux could do, alone, with a haphazardly stocked medkit. The bacta was blessedly cool against the burn, though even the largest patch in the kit barely covered the extent of the wound and burned-pink flesh extended across the pale curve of Hux’s upper thigh. When he had secured the edges of the patch he placed his hands beside his thighs and breathed through the last echoes of pain, in and out, in and out, fingers tight against the worn-thin cushion and metal lip of the bunk. 

Neither Dameron nor any of the other inhabitants of the Falcon reappeared though Hux sat quietly in the empty lounge area for a long time. The entirety of the ship seemed to hum and buzz with the vibration of the engines, the walls and ceiling of Hux’s small bunk amplifying the feeling in a way he expected to find annoying but instead found comforting, as though the ship were lulling him into a state of calm. When the throb of pain from his leg still did not relent, Hux made the executive decision that if he were going to be killed on this ship, it would happen regardless of the choices he made after this point, so he fished a rather old but not expired local anesthetic from the medkit and injected it into his leg. It would be difficult (if not impossible) to walk, but the relief he felt was instant and profound. He briefly thought he should recommend the anesthetic to Dameron but as Dameron appeared to be the only person able to pilot the ship Hux rather preferred he had use of both hands. A little searching yielded a worn but soft blanket which he draped over his bare legs, allowing himself to lie on the bunk, one arm tucked under his head as a pillow, for just a moment, and then a moment more. 

2

The Falcon’s landing on Kef Bir was atrocious, but not as atrocious as the getup for which Hux had to trade his uniform. Dameron was handsome, courteous, and utterly insensible to aesthetics, as demonstrated by his somewhat grimy white linen shirt, olive scarf, and brown pouch bandolier. For reasons Hux was quite uninterested in exploring the Falcon was equipped with a large stash of clothing, so Hux was able to replace his uniform breeches with a pair of rather close-fitting black trousers. Unfortunately, a unanimous consensus vote (from which Hux was rudely excluded) decreed that Hux should cover his distinctively red hair with the ugliest camouflage-print poncho upon which he had ever personally laid eyes, so he was stuck lurking on the outskirts of the rebel group’s interactions with what turned out to be a whole company of defected Stormtroopers, hood up, feeling distinctly criminal. 

He remembered the Battle of Ansett Island and the Company 77 defection; not personally, of course, but it was the darkest mark on the otherwise extremely successful reconditioning program. Captain Phasma had personally taken the brunt of Leader Snoke’s anger about the event, emerging from the holochamber on the _Finalizer_ pale and shaken and with bruises under both eyes. He avoided the group when they ventured close to the Falcon to assist Finn and the Wookiee with repairs, staying in the shadows and leaning heavily on his makeshift cane. He knew he didn’t, pardon the pun, have much of a leg to stand on when it came to defections from the First Order. Still, he felt uneasy when they came too close to him, recognizing salvaged sections of Trooper armor and the military hand signals they used to communicate over distances, worrying that they would recognize him in turn. 

Hux’s engineering knowledge was on a somewhat different scale than repairs for a decades-old ship, but he still knew his way around a circuit, so he ended up troubleshooting the repairs made by Finn and the other former Troopers, looking for bad connections in the circuitry bay while Dameron, in the cockpit, flipped switches and asked “What about now?” over the truly ancient handheld transceiver system Hux assumed had come with the ship. The interior of the ship was warm; planetside, the heat of the engine couldn’t vent into the cold vacuum of space, so the small circuitry bay in which Hux had tucked himself was getting hotter by the moment. 

A light blinked on beside a handwritten label reading “sublight 3.” 

“Sublight two?” Dameron asked over the radio, voice tinny with electronic distortion. 

“Er, no, sublight three,” Hux answered. 

“What’s this?” Dameron asked, and light beside the label “sublight 2” illuminated. 

“Sublight two.” 

Without his usual styling gel Hux’s hair was unruly, fluffy in the humidity and heat, flopping messily over his forehead. He pushed it back, frustrated with the dampness of sweat that pricked across his scalp, but it fell forward again. He was sick of his unruly hair and his aching leg and this shitty, broken ship and all the lunatics who crewed it. “I’ll have to rewire both circuits,” Hux sighed, dragging his hand over his face. When he released the transmission button, he articulated a heartfelt “ _Fuck_ ” in the close space of the empty circuitry bay. 

“Hang on,” came Dameron’s voice through the transceiver, and Hux waited, baffled, as the dull sound of Dameron’s footsteps on the metal floor of the Falcon came closer and closer. Hux leaned against the wall of the bay and thought about the medkit in the lounge and its collection of local anesthetics.

“Hang on,” Dameron said again, his voice low and rich now that Hux was no longer hearing him through the transceiver. He jogged up to the little doorway of the bay and leaned inside, suddenly extremely close to Hux. “Don’t rewire it.” 

“What are you,” Hux began, but Dameron scanned the board, eyes squinting in the darkness of the ship’s interior. Hux pointed mutely to Sublight Two and Sublight Three. 

Dameron leaned in closer, reaching his bare forearm past Hux toward the circuit board. “As I thought,” he said, and carefully peeled the labels from the board. 

“Is this how the entirety of the Resistance operates?” Hux asked dryly as Dameron switched the labels for Sublight Two and Sublight Three. 

“Pretty much,” Dameron answered cheerfully. 

Hux raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Incredible you lot have accomplished anything at all.” 

“‘You lot’?” Dameron laughed. “You’re part of it too, you know.” 

Hux snorted. “Hardly.” 

“Hey, you’ve given us valuable information, whatever your reasons are.” Dameron leaned calculatedly casually against the doorframe, tucking his hands into the pockets of his already tight trousers. He shrugged with one shoulder. His whole attitude was rather excessively roguish. 

“And I suppose you saved me to learn even more.” 

Dameron’s brows furrowed together. “No, I mean, it would be great if you told us more, but…” his dark eyes tracked over Hux’s face and Hux felt, suddenly, very self-conscious of his fluffy, sweaty hair and his extremely worse-for-the-wear regulation undershirt that still clung rather closely to his chest. 

“But what?” Hux demanded. 

“They would have killed you,” Dameron said slowly. 

“Haven’t we already had this conversation?” 

“Yeah, and I don’t think you got it then, either.” The full weight of Dameron’s attention in the close, hot room was almost too much. Hux was used to enduring such intense gazes only with the protective layer of his full uniform; without it, Hux felt small and exposed, his neck slender, his shoulders thin. “I didn’t want you to die for what you did for us.” 

Hux felt prickly and off-balance. “Why should you care?”  
“Is that really what it’s like in the First Order?” The skin around Dameron’s eyes had gone tight, like it had when he was in pain earlier. 

“I have it under rather reliable authority that people also die in the Resistance,” Hux said archly.

“You’re a fucking piece of work,” Dameron responded, then turned and stalked back down the corridor. 

Hux smoothed the peeling label that read “sublight 2,” pressing down its edges though they just curled up again once he removed his fingertips. 

3

It was useless and counterproductive to wish the past had happened differently; one could only press forward, forging the future one desired to see. However, on occasion, Hux did indulge in wondering what his life would have been like had his two boldest lies been truth: 

(1) Maratelle Hux was the mother of Armitage Hux.

(2) Armitage Hux was born a boy.

4

Nobody offered Hux a place on a Resistance ship prior to the Battle of Exegol and he did not ask for one. With the hood of the hideous poncho over his hair he blended into the ever-shifting crowd of those left behind to operate the control panels, occasionally checking coordinates or handing a tool to someone who asked for assistance. It felt like and unlike being a part of the First Order. Instead of a small cog in a huge machine, he was a Member of a Cause, surrounded by the same fanaticism, though the Resistance’s fanaticism was of a distinctly personal strain. The first time he responded to a request for someone to take over a navigation panel, the pale, dour-faced Caphex woman whom he relieved asked his name when thanking him. 

“Oh,” Hux had said, taken quite aback, “Armitage.” 

The Caphex woman smiled toothily at him, the tips of her fluffy sideburns pointing skyward. “Thank you, Armitage,” she said, and rushed off to somewhere else in the camp. 

Armitage busied himself with the navigation panel, tracking the small Resistance fleet’s path to Exegol. He did not think about the staggering number of Star Destroyers toward which they sped; nor about the odds of their ludicrously optimistic plan succeeding; nor about Poe Dameron, General of the Resistance, whom Armitage had personally ordered killed at least three distinct times, gloved hands splayed across the black and red and gray of his helmet as he settled it over the soft curls of his hair. And so he was Armitage in the Resistance camp in the jungle of Ajan Kloss, manning control panels when he was needed, sweating steadily under his poncho, and when Lando Calrissian announced that he had rounded up a veritable army out of random civilians of the known systems he did not join in the cheer that echoed across the humid, verdant forest that surrounded them, but the Caphex woman nudged his shoulder with her own and he smiled. 

(It was so like the Resistance to frame as a moral victory the complete destruction of hundreds of state-of-the-art Star Destroyers and the wanton murder of their innumerable crew, but who was Armitage Hux, the Starkiller, to argue?) 

The camp members who had stayed on Ajan Kloss began celebrating almost immediately after Resistance victory was confirmed; the group was small but Armitage was unable to escape, receiving no fewer than eight hugs from people he had met only that day. The celebration only became rowdier when the first fleet ships began to land on Ajan Kloss, settling their landing gear atop the dense forest undergrowth, pilots and navigators and gunners and bombers vaulting out of their ships to greet their fellows and those left on the ground, accepting hugs and slaps on the back and bottles of juri and Old Janx and the moonshine that two Mohsenian Resistance members brewed in big glass jugs behind the medical tent. After being reliably informed that Kylo Ren was, indeed, deceased, Armitage accepted a caf mug full of Mohsenian med tent moonshine and hobbled into the jungle just outside the bounds of the camp. He meant to sit alone on a stump in the quickly falling night, shed the hideous poncho, drink, and hopefully not be stumbled upon by one of the many couples—and Armitage saw at least one trio—sneaking away from the festivities. 

The moonshine burned his sinuses and made his lips tingle but it erased the persistent ache in his leg and lessened his constant low-grade terror that he had erred tremendously in aiding the Resistance. He made himself comfortable listening to the distant sounds of other peoples’ celebration echo dully through the dark forest, softened by the huge trunks of trees and the dense, chaotic foliage. He finished his mug of moonshine and did not get another. Night fell. He wondered, without any real urgency, whether there were jungle cats or huge snakes or other unimaginable nocturnal predators hiding amid the impenetrable undergrowth, but he also made no move to rejoin the continuing party, deciding that, all things considered, being mauled to death by a Klossian bear would be a painful but fittingly ironic end to Armitage Hux, former General to the First Order, certainly dishonorably discharged had the organization still existed to summarily cashier him. 

A spark illuminated the forest at some point between Armitage’s stump and the camp, the familiar flame of a lighter brought up between cupped palms to the end of a cigarette, the glow of the tobacco igniting as the smoker inhaled. Armitage weighed his innate distaste for personal interactions against his slightly drunken desire to smoke a cigarette and found that the latter won; using his cane he made his way across the uneven forest floor toward the tiny point of light between the trees. 

“Oh, it’s you,” Armitage said as he recognized Dameron.

Dameron exhaled a stream of smoke. “You have some kinda damage, don’t you.” 

“Yes, I got shot in the leg, remember,” Armitage replied.

Dameron burst out laughing, the sound rich and deep, too close to be muffled by the damp tree trunks and wet leaves that surrounded them. “Touché. I assume you came over for this?” He flipped open the top of the cigarette box and offered it to Armitage. 

“May I?” Armitage asked.

“Oh, _now_ you’re polite. Mercenary,” Dameron said, still chuckling. 

Armitage extracted a cigarette and placed it between his lips. Dameron raised his lighter, spinning the spark wheel with a familiar hush-click sound until a flame burst out of it. Armitage leaned in, cupping his hand around Dameron’s as if to protect the flame though the jungle was windless and still. His first lungful of smoke was immensely satisfying.

They smoked together in silence for a while. Armitage assumed Dameron was surveying him out of the corner of his eye as Armitage was certainly doing to Dameron, tracing with the aid of the faint light that filtered through the trees from the camp the slope of his cheek, his slightly crooked nose, his tousled hair. Dameron pinched the filter end of his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and Armitage placed a silent bet with himself that he would field-strip it when he had finished smoking. 

“We wouldn’t have been able to do any of it without you. Wouldn’t have even known about the fleet on Exegol until it was too late,” Dameron said. He was either extremely good at holding his liquor or had not partaken quite so thoroughly in the general revelry as others in the camp; he stood quite steady and the gaze he leveled at Armitage in the dark was clear and shrewd.

“You’re welcome.” Armitage resisted the temptation to shift his weight, though his left leg had begun to ache again and the handle of the cane dug uncomfortably into his palm. He took another drag of the cigarette instead. He wished he had poured himself more med tent moonshine.

“I don’t think anyone would mind if you stayed.” 

Armitage raised a skeptical eyebrow and exhaled smoke. “They gave me a _nickname_ ,” he said incredulously. 

“We can give you a different one,” Dameron shrugged. 

Armitage considered arguing the semantics of genocide when the Resistance fleet had just murdered thousands of people, but instead he said: “I told that Caphex woman my name is Armitage.” He flicked ash off the end of his cigarette. 

“Is it?” 

“Yes.” 

“Okay,” Dameron said, “Armitage,” like he was trying it out. 

“Dameron,” Armitage responded archly.

“Call me Poe.” 

“Are we friends now?” 

“I thought we already were.” 

“You Resistance types are certainly quite familiar.” 

Poe’s smile was sly and bright in the darkness. “Wanna get more familiar?” 

What a profoundly terrible idea. 

“Yes.” Armitage lost his bet with himself, after all, when Poe simply dropped the stub of his cigarette to the forest floor still smoldering to get his hands on Armitage that much quicker. One at his waist brought their bodies tightly together, sneaking under the hem of his shirt, Poe’s fingers warm against Armitage’s bare skin, the other coming up to the side of Armitage’s head, fingers in his hair, the heel of Poe’s palm roughly callused against his cheek. 

Their mouths met messily, the lingering tastes of smoke and liquor distracting Armitage only for a moment from the hot sliding sensation of their tongues together and the familiar scent of Poe’s body, sweat and metal. Poe’s hair was soft, curls encircling Armitage’s fingers when he delved his hand into it, but his body was hard against Armitage’s, muscled chest and flat stomach. The artfully roguish stubble that shadowed Poe’s chin and jaw scratched against Armitage’s face in an alarmingly erotic way. Poe caught Armitage’s lower lip between his teeth and tugged; Armitage’s hand tightened in the hair at the nape of Poe’s neck, coaxing their bodies even closer together.

Poe made a soft, wanting noise into Armitage’s mouth, his hand sliding from the small of Armitage’s back to his ass and squeezing, bringing their hips together in a slow grind. Already Armitage could feel the press of Poe’s burgeoning erection against the curve of his hip. He was surprised how badly he wanted, wanted all of it: Poe’s quick tongue and his callused hands and the insistent curve of his cock. 

“Tell me this camp has beds,” Armitage said in a wet slur against Poe’s mouth. 

“This camp has beds.” 

It was possible that in the time it would take for them to pick their way through the forest either or both of them would realize what a catastrophically terrible idea this was, but that seemed diminishingly likely as they were waylaid every few minutes by another session of kissing, pressing one another against the rough bark of trees, their hands roving over one another’s bodies. The camp had a few hastily constructed open-air dwellings and a few closed ones; to Armitage’s relief, Poe entered a closed one, illuminating the small space with an emergency lantern. 

“Very homey,” Armitage commented dryly. 

“You’d rather get leaves up your ass?” Poe asked. He grimaced as he raised his left arm over his head, tugging the sleeve of the shirt gingerly over the stark white bandage that was still wrapped around his upper arm. His breath caught on a gasp in his throat and he let it out in obvious relief when he lowered his arm again, and then he was standing, barechested, in front of Armitage. 

Armitage intended on responding with some barb but the sight of Poe’s naked body short-circuited something in his brain and he just stared at him instead: his broad shoulders and the muscular slopes of his pecs, the dark hair bisected on either side of his chest by the thin but unmistakable curving lines of scars. 

Poe caught him staring and raised a challenging eyebrow. “Is there a problem?” 

“Oh,” Armitage said, his voice weaker than he had intended it to be. “No, not as such.” And he pulled his own shirt over his head, his increasingly uncontrollable hair falling over his eyes to obscure his sight of whatever look Poe gave him in return. 

“Oh,” Poe echoed, and by the time Armitage pushed his hair out of his face Poe had closed the space between them, resting his splayed hands on Armitage’s waist. His palms were rough and very warm. Poe tipped his chin up and Armitage leaned down to meet him, lips parted and moving teasingly over Poe’s so they breathed one another’s air for the moment before Poe moved to kiss him, tongue delving roughly into Armitage’s mouth. 

Poe’s body felt broad and sturdy against Armitage’s, the hard slope of his pecs and his flat stomach, the soft curls of his chest hair. Armitage was slimmer, chest bonier and stomach softer than Poe’s, and when Poe backed Armitage against a shelving unit and pressed against him their bodies slotted comfortably together. Poe’s hands slid over the bare skin of Armitage’s flanks and over the worn material of his borrowed trousers, his thumbs digging uncomfortably into the hollows of Armitage’s hipbones, kneading the soft flesh of his hips and ass. 

Armitage’s face felt tender, rubbed raw by Poe’s stubble, and it was difficult to balance his weight only on his right leg while also keeping up the slow grind of his hips against Poe’s. He had to stay his body against tremors that threatened to shake through him, the source of which he couldn’t determine but which he was resolved to suppress. “Shall we make use of that bed,” he managed to ask in a manner more seductive than desperate. 

“Yeah,” Poe said, and when he drew back from Armitage he was obviously, gratifyingly hard. His hair was disheveled and his skin was flushed, his cheeks and chest and the tops of his shoulders where Armitage’s arms had been resting. “Fuck,” he breathed, “let me see you,” dark eyes tracking over Armitage’s slim, unremarkable body. His hands went to his belt but unbuttoning seemed to be secondary to how intently he was watching Armitage, wanting, open mouth kissed red. 

A little self-consciously Armitage also shed his trousers, very aware of his translucently white skin and his sparse, almost blond body hair and the ugly red-pink burn that extended past the edges of the bacta patch on his wound. He didn’t dare glance down at his own body, the scars that were much more prominent than Poe’s, thick lines that traced too much of the flat pale expanse of his own chest. The band of his underwear cut into the soft skin of his lower belly and the material draped loosely over the space between his thighs. When he removed that, too, it was just his gangly body and the soft thatch of red-blond hair between his thighs. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. The wound on his thigh burned.

“Fuck,” Poe said again, coming toward Armitage and touching his chest, the peak of one hipbone, hands large and warm on his body. “How do you want—” his eyes roamed over Armitage’s chest and throat and mouth until he finally, finally, met his gaze, dark and hungry. Poe swallowed and Armitage watched his throat move. Poe was not so ashamed as Armitage of his body, not that he had any reason to be: his legs were strongly muscled and faintly tan, and the sharp cut of his hipbones seemed to emphasize his thick, half-hard cock. After a long moment of staring, Poe finally asked: “Can I fuck you?” 

“Yes. Yeah,” Armitage said, and Poe kissed him again, wet tongue, hard teeth.

The mattress was thin and not particularly comfortable but the sheets were soft against Armitage’s bare skin as he laid back, propped on his elbows as Poe knelt on the mattress too. Poe slid his hot palm up the inside of Armitage’s uninjured thigh, coaxing his knee into a bend to settle between Armitage’s legs, carefully avoiding his sensitive burned skin and the white bacta bandage that still marred his thigh. Armitage felt intensely exposed and open, his skin luminous in the bright white light of the emergency lantern, knees parted, splayed open for Poe.

“Let me,” Poe said, kissing and then nipping the thin skin at the inside of Armitage’s right thigh, dragging his mouth down until he neared the joint of Armitage’s hip and thigh, glancing up through his long, dark eyelashes. Armitage held his gaze, at least until Poe pressed his mouth to the soft yielding inside of his thigh, then rubbed his prickly face against the flesh there so that Armitage squirmed and gasped and sighed. Poe breathed out hot against his skin and then moved to the place between his legs, delving his tongue into the wet wanting folds of his labia. 

Armitage’s body arched as Poe pressed his tongue to his clitoris, his mouth open, hot and mobile. His head fell back and his hands flexed against the sheets uselessly. Poe’s tongue fluttered against his clit and then moved down, slicking his labia, pressing inside him. Armitage swallowed a moan. Poe wrapped his arm more firmly under Armitage’s thigh so that he could hold his legs in place, his fingers slotting tenderly against the silky skin at the intersection of Armitage’s hip and thigh. In this as in everything else Poe was relentless, holding Armitage’s leg in place with the hand he had splayed over his hip as he fucked him with his tongue. Poe worked him to the edge of orgasm and kept him there, flicking his tongue against his clit again and again until Armitage was trembling and scrabbling at the sheets, barely able to keep quiet.

“Come on,” Poe said. He drew away to nip at the inside of Armitage’s thigh, mouth wet, stubble rough. “Let me hear you.” 

“Get fucked,” Armitage said.

“Oh, no,” Poe replied too casually, deliberately dragging his chin over Armitage’s sensitive skin. “That’s you.” And he pushed two fingers inside him. 

Armitage moaned. 

“Yeah,” Poe said, “like that. Come on.” 

“Shut _up_ ,” Armitage managed, but Poe curled his fingers inside him and he let out another embarrassing, breathy moan. 

Poe set his mouth over Armitage’s clit with his fingers still inside him and Armitage came, abruptly, with his back arched and his hips rolling against Poe’s mouth and hand. Poe worked him through it and he came again, hearing his own moans crest on a high desperate cry and then stutter into a gasping sob as Poe continued to fuck him. Only when Armitage pulled Poe’s head away from himself, looking blearily down the flushed-pink, sweat-slick planes of his own body, did Poe relent.

“Go again?” Poe asked brightly, smiling up at Armitage while he licked his wet lips. 

“Stars,” Armitage breathed, head falling back against the thin pillow. With the hand he had twined in Poe’s hair he weakly tugged Poe up his body and Poe went willingly, hitching Armitage’s leg around his waist as he slotted their hips together. The head of his cock rubbed hot and smooth against the outer folds of Armitage’s labia. When they kissed Armitage tasted himself, overwhelming the remnants of cigarette smoke and the taste of Poe’s own skin. 

Injured, they moved slowly together at first, Armitage less careful of his leg than he should have been, Poe gingerly supporting himself on just one arm, letting his other hand rest on Armitage’s chest. Poe rolled his hips, his cock teasing at Armitage’s entrance, and Armitage tucked his leg around the small of Poe’s back to pull him closer. They kissed again, sloppily, and Armitage closed his teeth around Poe’s lower lip and tugged. Poe sighed into his mouth and kissed him thoroughly, stubble rubbing raw Armitage’s chin. 

Poe’s cock slid easily against the wet folds of his labia, teasing. Poe loosed a soft whine against Armitage’s mouth and canted his hips up, breaching his wanting body, first the slick blunt head and then the length of it, slow enough for Armitage to register its thickness and heat.

“Don’t go slowly on my account,” Armitage said dryly, but his voice was soft and hoarse in the close space between them, more tender than he had intended. 

“What about on mine?” Poe asked, but he pulled out and slid back in with enough force to hitch Armitage’s breath. 

“There you go,” Armitage said, ending with a little involuntary “uhh” as Poe began fucking him in earnest, slowly but intensely. This was not at all the way he had expected sex with Poe Dameron to go: what he had imagined in the brief time between proposition and act was much hastier and involved considerably more sniping. 

Heat built between their bodies, sweat slicking their flushed faces and chests and the inside of Armitage’s leg and Poe’s waist around which it was hooked, the arm Poe had braced beside Armitage and the other which still rested on his chest, sweat-damp palm splayed over Armitage’s collarbone and the slope of his shoulder. It was difficult to look at Poe’s face, his dark eyes and long eyelashes and the gleam of sweat on his forehead, so Armitage closed his eyes, caught deliciously between the thin mattress and the hot length of Poe’s body, rocked steadily by the rhythmic insistent slide of his cock. 

“Fuck,” Poe gasped, leaning some of his weight against Armitage’s chest, “my arm is not gonna last.” 

“Come here.” Armitage brought one arm heavily over Poe’s shoulders, tugging him down so they crashed together. “I won’t break.” He could feel each breath Poe took against his own chest, the slope of his muscles and the slick slide of his sweaty skin. 

“You just got shot,” Poe reminded him breathlessly. Like this Poe couldn’t pull out as far but he thrusted deeper, the sex or the weight of Poe’s body forcing Armitage’s breath from him. He was lightheaded, drunk on warmth and closeness and the deep rumble of Poe’s chest against his own when he spoke.

“As did you,” Armitage shot back, “lunatic.” 

“Okay, fair.” Poe pressed his face into the joint of Armitage’s neck and shoulder and breathed there, the close heat of him drawing sweat from his skin, hair curling damply against Armitage’s cheek, and then he turned just enough to kiss and nip gently at Armitage’s throat below his ear. 

“Huh,” Armitage half-breathed half-moaned, arching involuntarily against Poe. Poe nipped his neck again, a little lower, then moved lower still and took a thin fold of skin between his teeth, working his jaw so that pain sang out all along Armitage’s throat. 

“You like that,” Poe mumbled, nipping at a different spot and then biting another bruise into his skin. They rocked together, Poe’s steady thrusts hitting sweetly inside Armitage.

“Ah, fuck.” Armitage writhed and arched beneath Poe as Poe laid a trail of bruises down his throat and shoulder. 

“I should’ve expected this,” Poe said between bites, still fucking him. “You’re a slut for pain.” 

“Don’t,” Armitage moaned, but his trembling gave him away, his body wracked with pleasure beneath Poe’s ungentle mouth. 

“Can you come like this?” Poe asked against the edge of Armitage’s collarbone. 

Armitage moaned again. “Don’t know,” he gasped.

Poe propped himself up on his elbow again to look at Armitage once again. His face was flushed, his eyes so dark. Then he leaned down to draw Armitage’s lower lip into his mouth, biting hard enough for Armitage to gasp and squirm beneath him as he fucked him harder. They kissed messily, without much coordination, and Armitage buried one hand in Poe’s sweat-damp hair, curled his fingers, and tugged. The rhythm of Poe’s hips sped and then stuttered, his hand grasped at Armitage’s shoulder, and he buried his face in Armitage’s neck once again, moaning low and loud into his skin. Like that he came, hips still rolling against Armitage’s, cock pulsing inside him. 

Armitage felt a strange, deep satisfaction that he had made Poe come so suddenly, uselessly pawing at Armitage’s body, shuddering and shuddering against him; the satisfaction stayed as Poe pulled out of him and eased carefully over his wounded leg before collapsing heavily against his side. 

“Fuck,” Poe mumbled. 

“Fuck,” Armitage agreed. 

Before Armitage could formulate a proper response to the situation Poe’s left hand came weakly up to his cheek, tipping his head to face him. Poe’s eyes tracked over his face, lashes fluttering gently with the movement, and then he tipped his chin up for a kiss. Armitage returned the kiss, his tongue teasing the seam of Poe’s mouth before he drew away. 

“Will you stay?” Poe asked softly. 

Armitage considered asking if he meant in this terrible little bed in this sex-scented hut in the middle of a rainforest, for tonight, while they could still hear the faint sounds of celebration at the main camp. 

“For now,” he said.


End file.
